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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28326444">Christmas Tradition</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper'>Professional_Creeper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Holiday Bingo 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Law &amp; Order: SVU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Fluff, Morning Cuddles, Morning Sex, One Shot, Sleepiness, Smut</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:40:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,078</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28326444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Professional_Creeper/pseuds/Professional_Creeper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A warm memory. A new Christmas tradition. Holiday angst.</p><p>Written for @thatesqcrush’s Holiday Bingo on Tumblr</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rafael Barba/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Holiday Bingo 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093550</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Christmas Tradition</h2></a>
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    <p>Cool white light filtered in through the curtains in Rafael Barba’s bedroom. It was already 9am on Christmas morning—longer than the workaholic ADA ever slept in—but you hoped he wouldn’t wake.</p><p>From the moment his eyes opened, he would launch into frenetic activity until they closed again, and his brow, so smooth and peaceful now, would crease with constant worry over his cases and the victims relying on him. The world resting on his shoulders.</p><p>Sleeping was almost an unnatural state to see him in.</p><p>Your forehead was buried against the strong muscles of his naked arm, and your fingers spayed over his soft, dark bed of chest hair, slowly rising and falling with each steady breath.</p><p>He stirred in his sleep, and you tensed, trying to keep perfectly still. But instead of breaking the serene moment, he lifted his arm to wrap it around your shoulder and pull you onto his chest. A sleepy hum of appreciation vibrated your throat as you settled in this closer position, nuzzling the crook of his neck. He sighed, a smile turning his lips, though his eyes remained closed.</p><p>You didn’t know how much time passed, exactly. When you opened your eyes again, the blurry clock beside the bed seemed to indicate 9:20. Your right arm was falling asleep under you, and an ache in your side convinced you, grudgingly, to roll onto your back. As soon as you did, he moved with you onto his left side, draping a possessive arm over your waist. He buried his forehead against your arm.</p><p>The haze of sleep drifted over both of you like banks of fog on a spring morning before dawn—though it was now late enough that, if it weren’t a holiday, you would be anxious at having wasted the day. When consciousness cleared your senses again, you were on your other side. Rafael’s forty-eight-hour stubble lightly scratched your back, and his leg bent between yours. A large, warm hand cupped your breast. You smiled dreamily at how close and comforting his presence was, pleased he chose to melt into you instead of getting up. Against your ass, where his hips were pressed to yours, his erection hardened.</p><p>His hand seemed to grow aware of itself, moving lower over your stomach. You covered it with your own and returned it to its place. It languidly kneaded the invitingly soft fat. Rafael made a sleepy, contented grumble as you rolled your hips, shifting against his cock. It wasn’t yet at its full, proud length, but that soon changed as he registered your willingness.</p><p>Slipping the elastic band of your pajama bottoms over the swell of your ass, you moaned as you felt him raw against your heat. He already discreetly grabbed the lube off the nightstand while your attention was on your pants, only bothering to pull them down far enough to give him access, and he slicked some over his eager hardness and your entrance.</p><p>You shifted your hips, curving your back to help line up his blunt head at a good angle, and slowly sank onto him. Rafael rocked forward and back, inches at a time, opening you slowly until he was buried in your warm depths. He kissed the nape of your neck, thrusting lazily. There was nothing urgent about it. Neither of you wanted to get out of bed. It was too peaceful just cuddling, loving being next to one another, pretending the rest of the world didn’t exist.</p><p>Eventually, he nudged you onto your stomach and laid himself over your back, his cock never leaving your warmth. You moaned your pleasure at the deeper penetration, the way the position gave his hips a little more leverage to thrust, though it was still his arms pressing your sides and his steady breath fanning your ear that you enjoyed most. The warm weight of him was an anchor, reassuring you that he would always be there. That you were safe. His hands gripped the sheets beside your head, and you twined your fingers through them.</p><p>You squeezed your thighs together to add friction as the slow, comfortable warmth between your legs began to grow. Rafael noticed your shift, and you twisted to look over your shoulder and find his face there, inspecting you with dark, heavily-lidded green eyes. You captured his soft lips. His chest rumbled with a low groan of rapture that you more felt against your back than heard, and his tongue softly probed your mouth.</p><p>As your alertness and need grew, he sat back on his haunches, pulling your hips up off the mattress with him, and each thrust suddenly struck impossibly deeper, hitting something new that made molten heat shoot through with such force you moaned out loud. Rafael’s strong hands replaced the weight of his chest on your back, pushing your shoulders possessively into the mattress as the speed of his hips increased. You cried out wantonly, reaching under your body to stroke yourself, arousal tightening, building, burning in every muscle as Rafael’s thick cock pounded into all the right places. Your noises became inarticulate and lewd as your climax built, as you listened to his breath grow ragged with his fast-approaching release.</p><p>“I love you—I love you,” you choked out.</p><p>The confession made his hips stutter off their rhythm. Then he whispered it back, and fucked you harder, deeper, until you were wailing with pleasure and the fire pooling inside you snapped just as his did, coming around his cock as the heat of his seed flooded you, mixing with your own slippery release. His hips twitched inside of you a few more times while your walls fluttered and convulsed around him, milking every drop.</p><p>And then Rafael Barba woke up.</p><p>His boxers were sticky from the dream, which had been so pleasant, but now only added to the sinking pit in his stomach—the dull ache he felt every Christmas alone since he lost you.</p><p>His bed and his apartment were cold. Empty. Too big for just him.</p><p>There were no decorations up. No lights, no tree or wreath to mark the season. But there was an expensive bottle of Macallan waiting for him to drink alone. That was his tradition, now. That was his tradition every lonely year that flew by, leaving him a little bit older, and a little less certain those warm memories of being loved had ever been more than just a dream.</p>
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